This is a very interesting and very radical idea. Care to elaborate further?
Sources for the Old Testament
- Thread starter OrthodoxWanderer
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This is a very interesting and very radical idea. Care to elaborate further?
Old Temple Judaism was more henotheistic than monotheistic. Yahweh which simply refers to “I am” was kind of an ethnic god. Many of the ancient Israelites were flat out pagan and that’s why god sent them prophets.
The idea that there’s no God but God, and “I am” is a cosmic God starts emerging during the Babylonian exile with the tribe of Judahs exposure to Mazda. When Cyrus the Great, a Zoroastrian, allows Ezra and Nehemiah to rebuilt the temple, you see some of the Iranic ritual rub off on the new priesthood of the temple. However, the priesthood became corrupt and concerned with trivialities so God became man to pay them a visit. They nailed him to a cross on this day. Modern Judaism comes from the coping and seething that commenced when this second temple was destroyed.
I’m not a perennialist, god became man so that man can become god so Christianity is the true path, but God since he created the world, I don’t doubt has tapped on the window a few times in the lead up to the resurrection.
How can you say this when the oldest portions of Scripture present God as a cosmic God?
You're going to have problems with this due to your inerrancy bias, your inability to faithfully discern canon and it as a process, as history, and the lack of understanding of deuterocanonical books as private reads, etc.
I tend to agree with you and I will stress that it is my private interpretation as well. As I said before, there were centuries of the bronze age back and forth, with Greeks/Persians and the tribes of Israel in between - but not just that, the eschatology of Mazdaism is quite strikingly similar to the Christian eschaton. I can explain this without causing problems or doubts in that the seeds all lead to Christ, as Kaveman states. There are truths to the universe and realities that were also understood even with the pagans, such as the fact that the "gods" of the earth were actually demons. One of my biggest questions about the Cosmos and God's interaction with it, which I won't get an answer for and don't need one, it's just interesting to me, is why the demons are allowed to give technology to man, who proves he can't use it or those in league with the evil forces use to debase the normies, millenia after millenia. It's an interesting thing to think about.
Iakobos
Orthodox
Henotheism: a pluralistic theology wherein different deities are viewed to be of a unitary, equivalent divine essence; the worship of a single, supreme god that does not deny the existence or possible existence of other deities that may be worshipped.
Where in Scripture is it suggested that it is permissible to worship other deities or that various deities are equal reflections of God or in anyway comparable to Him?
The statement "I am" is in and of itself a claim to cosmic sovereignty. It can also be read as "I am the One who Is."
"Ethnic god" claims refuted in OT passages:
Genesis 12:3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."
Genesis 22:18 "And in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice."
Psalm 22:27 "All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord"
Isaiah 2:2 "It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains... and all the nations shall flow to it."
Isaiah 49:6 "It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob... I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth."
Jeremiah 3:17 "At that time Jerusalem shall be called the throne of the Lord, and all nations shall gather to it, to the presence of the Lord in Jerusalem..."
Evidence to the contrary:
All of the creation account of Genesis
Deuteronomy 4:35 "To you it was shown, that you might know that the Lord is God; there is no other besides him."
Deuteronomy 4:39 "Know therefore today, and lay it to your heart, that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other."
Deuteronomy 32:39 "See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand."
2 Samuel 7:22 "Therefore you are great, O Lord God. For there is none like you, and there is no God besides you, according to all that we have heard with our ears."
1 Kings 8:23 "O Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like you, in heaven above or on earth beneath, keeping covenant and showing steadfast love to your servants who walk before you with all their heart."
Psalm 86:8 "There is none like you among the gods, O Lord, nor are there any works like yours."
Isaiah 43:10-11 "Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. I, I am the Lord, and besides me there is no savior."
Isaiah 44:6 "I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god."
Isaiah 45:5 "I am the Lord, and there is no other, besides me there is no God."
Isaiah 45:21-22 "And there is no other god besides me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none besides me. Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other."
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I'm not sure if you realize that what you're saying is heretical and unsupported by Scripture? Your position denies the revelations of God to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses. Forgive me if I've misinterpreted your meaning.
Not sure what you're trying to say here but if you're going with liberal scholarship and it's errancy bias then I'm going to reject it. Not sure what the deuterocanonicals have to do with this.
Might have to clarify it more - some saw it that way but they were a minority following the prophetic tradition. Israelite peasants would’ve been worshiping other gods. Ashera, or Ishtar was a common one. They were pseudo pagans offering sacrifice at Solomon’s temple. This would get stomped out at the Babylonian exile and exposure to Zoroastrianism gave the prophets the ammo to do this.
Old Testament wasn’t written in a day. There’s Elohimist segments and Yahwist segments. The later portrays a more cosmic god and that’s where you have non Israelites worshipping god most high. Some examples in scripture would be Moses father in law, the priest of Midian. There were other tribes that knew “he who is.” also when Abraham first entered Canaan he met Melchizedek, the priest king of God most high. Finally Samuel was a servant to a priest of god. What Temple? Solomon wasn’t alive yet.
You need to understand the Bible wasn’t written in one sitting and the books of Moses even weren’t written by Moses alone. A lot of fundamentalists believe this but the Bible was compiled. I go hard on the Jews but what we call the Old Testament is largely their work during the Babylonian exile and the post exile era.
Fun tidbit - the golden calf story was added into Exodus by the Yahwists to chastise the bull imagery being used in worship by the commoner Ancient Israelites.
There were basically two groups - one group that believed in a cosmic god and the other were henotheists. It’s why David’s state split in two. If I’m incorrect why did Elias have to essentially duel the priests and prophets of Ba’al. Sounds a lot like even though henotheism is condemned by scripture the ancient Israelites were doing it anyway. Why is Jeremiah preaching against pagan practices? Because they were doing it. Why was sacrificing your kids to Moloch encoded in Leviticus? Because someone was doing it. The pre exile Israelites were henotheists. We as orthodox are heirs to the ancient prophetic tradition, not whatever some goat farmer was doing in ancient Jericho.
Where I bring up Zoroastrianism is the pagan ish Israelites largely allied with the Phoenicians who god would punish for their degeneracy. First with the Assyrians. Then god would punish their Carthaginian descendants with the Romans. The prophets however largely allied themselves with the Persians. Daniel resided in the courts of the king of kings. We even see Christ as sort of a God Emperor irl. We call him a Pantocrator.
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No one is arguing that the Bible was written in a day, but that's not a slam-dunk argument for the liberal scholarship's theory of Yahwist/Elohimist traditions or the mythical Q source that the Gospels are allegedly based on. These are big claims to make without any evidence.
What is your proof?
The Bible is very candid that some Israelites were given to idolatry and syncretism.
Bulls in Ancient Israel - Bible Odyssey
Bulls in ancient Israel had many roles, including use in sacrifices and depiction as worship imagery.
www.bibleodyssey.org
I’m not some liberal religious scholar looking to take Christianity down a notch. I just see everything as part of a long prophetic tradition that we celebrate ending tonight. The resurrection is the capstone of these things I’m talking about. God becomes man to trample down death by death. That’s why we live in the latter days. The story’s over. It’s finished. In a lot of evangelical circles everyone’s talking about the end of the world but in all reality, nobody knows. It ends when it ends. But we live in the back half of salvation history.
Iakobos
Orthodox
It's clear that Israelites were commonly tempted by pagan worship practices and that many indulged in such things to their condemnation but this has little to do with the points you are asserting.
My previous post demonstrates that God's prior revelations to the prophets supplied them with ample "ammo" to begin with. Unless you are suggesting that all of the OT including the Pentateuch was produced after the Babylonian exile which is an atraditional, ahistorical and heretical claim.
You are suggesting that Scripture is a patchwork of incoherence with regard to its description and testimony of God which I hate to tell you is blasphemous and flies in the face of all Church tradition.
Your examples only support the pre-Babylonian understanding of a cosmic God in Scripture.
No one thinks the Bible was "written in one sitting." This is a strawman. What Orthodox do believe is that the Bible is true and consistent with God's revelations and the history of Israel. What you call "fundamentalism" is the position of the Church tradition since its foundation.
I see while I was typing my response you posted this link: https://www.bibleodyssey.org/articles/bulls-in-ancient-israel/
The fact that bulls were worshipped as pagan icons does not in any way support the claim that those passages of the text were 'inserted' after the fact. Why wouldn't it be possible that pagan bull icons were worshipped in the time of Moses and that the golden calf incident happened as described? You are not building a chain of logic here.
These things are true, but have nothing to do with providing any evidence that Scripture was written or inserted by pagans or that "old temple and second temple Judaism were "forms of Mazdism".
Daniel was taken as a slave/servant and brought messages, wisdom and revelations from God TO the Babylonians. How does this support your claims? You insinuate that Daniel chose to associate with them because they worshipped righteously which is not at all what the text describes.
That may be, however you are working within their paradigm.
Is your contention that the golden calf story wasn't something that actually happened but something that was written later on to make some sort of theological point?
The reason people are saying you might be being influenced by secular liberal scholarship cause it's typical of that sort of form of scholarship to see what appears in Scripture not as an author trying to put down into words events that have occurred or to record revelations but instead to see the author as a propagandist that's trying to spin something to fit his own personal agenda whether it be because he's an Babylonian exile priest trying to stamp out idolatry or an early Christian trying to prove the Trinity. The basic assumption is to be suspicious of the author's honesty.
That's fine, but my concern is that when you introduce the hyper-skepticism that you and Blade Runner are promoting, you undercut the ability to believe anything in the Bible at all. There is no "long prophetic tradition" culminating in the Resurrection if the Bible is a post-hoc edit job by redacted interlocutors, and make no mistake, that is the thesis that liberal Biblical scholarship promotes. Rather, we should take the same view of the Old Testament that Jesus did.
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We should do a different thread on this topic, as it is actually more what you are getting at rather than your doubts about some ideas of God over time. For example, the modern day is all about egalitarianism, which is in a sense borrowed from christianity, but it's gone way too far such that even priests (because of the culture) buy its presuppositions, which are more marxist than historically accurate. The race and sex debates on the forum actually bear this out.
I'm not promoting anything in this thread.
I agree.
I wouldn’t say post hoc. We had a pretty much all of Tanakh 400 years before Christ. and lots of it is even older. They found a section of Numbers in a burial chamber from the 700s BC.
Honestly I do get what you’re getting at. If engaging in scholarship hurts your faith, you’re better off not doing it. I just started looking into where the Old Testament came from and learned about Yahwist, Elohimist, and Priestly sources that all contributed to the Old Testament. And then you have the deuterocanon that comes from the Hellenic era.
To me this doesn’t make the Bible any less true if that makes any sense. Its purpose is to show god at work in human history so it’s still worth believing in
That's not what I'm saying either. I don't mind scholarship. But there is a range in scholarship. Conservative Biblical scholarship can grant interlocutors, addendums, textual variants, etc. I'm mainly giving you pushback because the theory of the Yahweh vs Elohim traditions comes from uber-liberal, Bart Ehrman level scholarship that cannot in anyway be reconciled with Christian orthodoxy.
For example, it wouldn't be unscholarly of me to maintain that Moses was a real person. The paradigm is not simply liberal scholarship vs conservative fundamentalism. The problem with many of these liberal theories is that they lack external evidence. They only have what's called internal evidence, which without external evidence, amounts to a bad reading.
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Then what was the point of your hit-and-run "you don't have the ability to understand these complex issues" post?
That was not at all what KK said.
I wasn't responding to KK.